Previews

MadWorld

As Inaba mowed through sanguine moment after sanguine moment, we noticed some aesthetic charm behind MadWorld's designs. The simplicity of its color schemes also looks great for game play. How? Alongside the black-and-white settings and the blood, every gesture indication shows up on-screen in bright yellow. It's a great way to visually separate pertinent information (in this case, the gestures required to slice a guy in half) from both the high-contrast art style and the rivers of crimson flooding the screen. It's not earth-shattering, but it's a nice subtle touch.

In the second portion of the demo Inaba showed off vehicles. As Jack traverses DeathWatch's terrain, he'll use a motorcycle to get from point to point. In the final product, he'll have to stave off other combatants as he rides through the mean streets, as shown in the new video. To be honest, it looks roughly as simplistic as the motorcycle handling in No More Heroes, with one button accelerating and another boosting. Although Sega touted it as a big unveiling, it doesn't seem to be adding up to a lot at this point; perhaps the lack of actual motorcycle combat in the demo took away some thunder.

Once Jack hit his destination, things became a bit more appealing. He must face a new boss in this section. Instead of wielding a stereotypically huge axe or knife, this villain (dubbed "Herr Frederick Von Twirlenkiller" in the new trailer) has two giant wind turbines on his arms. He shoots out tornado-strength force that hurdles cars and dangerous debris at Jack. The sight of flying cars and massive pieces of scrap metal contributes to the sort of madcap style that Inaba seems to be aiming for. Like the E3 demo, though, once Jack started the fight with this tornado-firing behemoth, the demo closed with yet another cliffhanger conclusion.

After the demo wrapped, Sega and Inaba took a few questions. Many seemed to range from the generic ("how many weapons are in the game?") to asking Sega about the violence level (answer: "we're working with each ratings board to ensure that it's properly rated"). We just wanted to know how many hours of dialogue to expect. We're amused with the crass humor of the commentators, but also concerned that the banter could start repeating itself too often. Sega's response? The dialogue's still being written, and we should all expect the commentators to have more than a handful of one-liners. We can only hope. Although Sega replied to the question of how long MadWorld will last with, "it won't be as long as Okami" (Inaba's last project), there seemed to be some indication that it's not going to be particularly long, and that it's being designed with replay value in mind, especially in mini-games like the Bloodbath Challenges. We also heard a vague "we're exploring the online space," which could mean online leaderboards.

Sega seems to be playing it coy at the show with MadWorld, which is unfortunate, considering the splash it made at E3. Granted, it seems as though Platinum isn't going for a deep experience filled with hours of discovery and narrative, but it's a shame that all we're seeing is vehicles and one mini-game. We're still excited about this fusion of stylish art, comical ultra-violence and jaw-dropping humor, but we're hoping to see more of it in action at TGS.